The Spare Kidney

A human kidney modelled a little over life size in painted plastic, bisected into two separable halves for teaching anatomy. Made in England circa 1970 for the educational market.

The Organ

From the outside it is a plausible kidney, painted a deep matte brown with the characteristic bean shape, the hilum indicated, and the vessels picked out in relief along the concave border: the artery in red, the vein in slate grey, the ureter in buff. The brown has gone liverish and dull with age. Where handling has caught the high points and the rim, the paint has chipped away to a pale substrate beneath. It is a little larger than the organ it copies, and heavier than it looks.

The two halves part along a coronal section. Inside, the internal architecture is painted in the manner of the period: a buff cortex streaked with fine radiating lines and dotted with red and black vessels, the medullary pyramids fanned and stippled, the renal pelvis a pale sage green, the calyces cupped and picked out in orange with their tubules in red and black. Nothing moves. Nothing is expected to move. It is a teaching model.

In the Cabinet

England produced a great many anatomical teaching models in the post-war decades. Kidneys, hearts, livers, eyes, ears, the torso with all its organs nested inside like a puzzle box. They were bought by schools, by hospital training wards, and by those private collectors who kept a cabinet of natural and medical curiosities at home. This one is from the 1970s, moulded in plastic but following the same conventions as the papier mâché and plaster models that had preceded it.

A kidney on a shelf is an odd thing. It is an organ we all possess, recognise by name, and never see. There is something quietly indecent about having one in plain view. It makes the room feel like a surgery. Or like a very particular kind of private museum.

Condition and Provenance

• Moulded plastic teaching model, c.1970, of the pattern made by Educational Plastics
• Made in England
• Approximately 7 inches tall, 4½ inches wide, 2½ inches deep as a closed pair, a little over life size
• Two separable halves; painted internal structures
• Used condition. The paint carries a fine craquelure throughout, heaviest across the cut faces and along the section edges. Chipping and small paint losses to the rim, the ureter and the high points of the exterior. No structural breaks, no missing anatomical sections, no repairs.

This is an authentic period teaching model, not a reproduction.